Censorship and Freedom of Expression

Photo courtesy of flickr/Chrystian Guy While much of the sturm and drang of the "big" issues in U.S.-China relations--Tibet, North Korea, Iran, and RMB revaluation among others--seems to have dissipated in the intense summer heat wave we have been enjoying here on the East Coast, a number of conflicts over technology continue to bubble along. Most prominent, of course, has been the compromise between Google and China.  In March, Google began automatically redirecting users of Google.cn to Google.com.hk.  The redirect did not give users in China free access to information, but it at least put the onus of censorship on China and the Great Firewall, not on Google.  The Chinese government was not particularly pleased with this bit of engineering, and seemed quite willing to cancel Google’s Internet Content Provider (ICP) license.  Another piece of engineering cleverness--users in China are now taken to a landing page, which they have to click one more time before being taken to the Hong Kong site--has at least temporarily mollified China and the license was renewed last week. This is a good outcome for both sides, but will be a temporary standoff at best.  Google retains a foothold in the vast Chinese internet market and some hope that it will be able to play in the lucrative mobile market.  Beijing can say that it did not drive Google out, which would not reflect well on its claims that Chinese users enjoy free, unfettered access to information.  Moreover, as Rebecca MacKinnon notes, there maybe a growing realization among some officials and entrepreneurs that Google plays an important role in driving innovation within China.  An insulated market, cut off from the cutting edge of technologies, is no good for the development of a sector the Chinese leadership sees as critical to the future. Yet, the jockeying over technology positions continues.  Huawei, the Chinese telecom company, is looking for deals in the United States, despite continued security concerns about the firm’s connections to the government and the People’s Liberation Army (PDF).  Just last month, the Obama Administration blocked another Chinese company from entering a joint venture with an American manufacturer of fiber optics.  On the other side of the Pacific, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences just accused Facebook and other social-networking sites of fomenting social instability, and 21st Century China Business Herald ran a piece criticizing Intel for uncompetitive practices, claiming it downgraded a Chinese laptop producer for using rival AMD processors for the first time. Just back from Beijing, Senators Dianne Feinstein, Mark Udall, and Kay Hagan reported that Chinese leaders expressed a willingness to talk about Internet freedom and cybersecurity. Moving forward with these talks is a good idea, but they need to be broader, including discussions about market access, technology standards, and cross-border investment.

My reaction to Secretary of State Clinton’s speech on Internet freedom, "The Chinese Internet Century," is now up.  While Clinton’s call for an open, global Internet was both stirring and the right thing to do, we have to start planning for a world where China and others shape their own cyberspaces to meet economic, political, and strategic interests. Go read the whole thing at foreignpolicy.com. Not surprisingly, the Chinese have pushed back, decrying the drive for "Internet hegemony" and rejecting the "imposition of value systems" and the "guidance of ’American-style freedoms.’" All of this focus on the State Department and then on official Chinese response, however, overlooks an incredibly important point made by David Bandurski at the China Media Project.  The web in China is not a finished product, but a process that is being constantly re-made by Chinese users. Yes, the state imposes limits, and maybe new U.S. policies designed to help Chinese netizens get around the Great Firewall will have some impact, but "to the extent that China’s Internet does offer a new space for expression, it is Chinese citizens who are responsible for pushing open this new space (often at substantial risk to themselves, as the recent jailing of Web users has shown)."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Internet speech was noteworthy for a number of reasons—but what struck me most was her comment that principles like information freedom aren’t just good policy connected to American values; they are universal. I like the sound of that. The remark drew me back a few months to a talk on U.S.-China relations given by one of the most articulate and thoughtful members of China’s senior leadership, where I also heard something I liked. He proposed a solution to our challenging bilateral relationship that was presented in a particularly elegant form: harmony without uniformity. In other words, the United States and China don’t have to agree on the full range of policies, we can co-exist peacefully with our differences. At the time, the idea of harmony without uniformity made perfect sense. In fact, it seemed nicely grounded in American sensibilities, such as “we can all go along to get along” or “we can agree to disagree.” Weeks later, though, I found myself thinking that his idea was rather fundamentally flawed. In fact, it made no sense at all. Harmony in international relations emerges out of uniformity—in purpose, principles, policies, or actions. And indeed, there is little harmony in our relationship with China on issues such as Internet freedom and censorship precisely because there is no uniformity in purpose, principle, or action. But if my favorite Chinese princeling is wrong, so too is Secretary Clinton. Internet freedom is not a universal value (check out China, for instance), and wishing it were so won’t make it so. So is there any way to avoid yet another train wreck in U.S.-China relations? Secretary Clinton’s speech pretty much says it all: our leverage boils down to the Chinese people themselves insisting on change because they recognize the value of freedom and transparency and the Chinese leaders yielding to the wishes of the people. That might take a while. Of course, there is another possibility. If China’s leaders decide that “harmony without uniformity” is more than a pretty-sounding bumper sticker, they might test drive it at home. That would be the greatest boon of all to Internet freedom in China.

I am going to stay away from the by now well-trod debate about why Google made its decision to stop censoring the web and possibly retreat from the China market (you can read those here, here, here, and here; this and this, however, bring a new twist: Google left because the hacking exposed how it was collecting information on all of its users through an "internal intercept system."). Instead, I’ll tackle some other questions: 1) Is the attack a wake-up call, a symbol of a more aggressive China? Is this cyber attack part of a "new front among Cold War foes" or, as James Fallow puts it, the beginning of China’s Bush-Cheney era?  Uhm, why are we shocked that China is being difficult?  While this instance of hacking is clearly dangerous and egregious, it’s not really anything new.  We have known about Chinese economic espionage for at least a decade.  The Tracking GhostNet report, which uncovered a global effort to target the computers of human rights and Tibetan activists was released in September 2009.  The stated goals of Chinese technology policy are to increase China’s own technological capabilities, to develop Chinese firms that are able to compete with Western companies, and to reduce China’s dependence on imported technology. Last year, when everyone was very expansive about how Washington was going to build a new relationship on broad cooperation with Beijing on everything from regional security to climate change and world trade, Liz Economy and I were much more skeptical, arguing that cooperation would be hard because of "mismatched values, interests, and capabilities." 2) Will Google’s threat fundamentally change how U.S. companies interact with China? Google may have taken the "China corporate communications playbook, wrapped it in oily rags, doused it in gasoline and dropped a lit match on it," in ImageThief’s evocative wording, but I do not see many other companies following that route.  They will continue to get along by going along, generally keeping quiet, and dealing with the government behind closed doors. Consumers may love KFC and Nike, but Google probably bet right that it has a special relationship with the most technologically savvy of Chinese users.  These Chinese netizens were going to see censorship as the problem and were, at least in the short term, going to side with Google (you can read some of these comments at Global Voices Online).  Moreover, most companies have a lot more at stake on the ground--employees, facilities, distribution and supplier networks, alliances--then Google.  And with wider adoption of virtual private networks, Google may think it can continue to serve the Chinese market outside of China. 3) What’s the future of cyber security and U.S. foreign policy? While much of the speculation about cyber security has centered around what type of influence and authority the newly-named cyber czar Howard Schmidt will have; what role DHS and NSA should play in cyber defense; and when the Defense Department will "stand up" its cyber command, the most pressing question is now whether a free and open Internet is an essential part of defending American interests in cyberspace. One day we might look back and see Google’s decision to leave China as one of the first signposts of splintering the world wide web and the emergence of a series of loosely joined regional webs, some more relatively open then others.  Would an open Web centered on the United States be more vulnerable to cyber attacks than one guided by China, separated by the Great Firewall, language, culture, and differing technology standards? If so, and I think that could be the case, we need a policy that combines better defense of our own systems, multinational mechanisms to limit cyber conflict, and efforts to promote American values on the Internet, especially individual autonomy, access to information, and freedom of speech. We’ll have to see if this is what Secretary Clinton talks about in her January 21 address on Internet freedom.

This is already a remarkable story, and it is sure to have a major impact on U.S.-China relations as it develops. Google has announced that it was hacked.  While not blaming the Chinese government, Google says it traced the attacks back to China and that they resulted in the loss of Google’s intellectual property and involved 30 other companies. More ominously, the attacks appear to have targeted human rights activists in China, Europe, and the United States. As a result, Google says it will stop censoring search results in China.  And although the announcement says that Google will be discussing with the local authorities how it can do that under China law, it looks like if you search for Tiananmen Square from google.cn now, you will see photos of "Tank Man", the brave individual who held up a column of tanks after the June 4th massacre (hat tip to the blogger Michael Anti). Before, you would have just seen the typical tourist photos of the square with no reference to the demonstrations. Google also says that it is considering withdrawing from the Chinese market. It will be interesting to see how this decision plays out in China (and in the United States). Some on twitter are talking about bringing flowers to Google’s offices in Haidian, others were arguing that Google was pulling out because it was losing market share to the Chinese search company Baidu. (The twitter conversations, #googlecn is here; you can read a U.S.-based argument against seeing this as a cynical business decision here). I am sure there is going to be much more to say about this over the next days, but here are two quick thoughts.  First, with the announced arms sales to Taiwan, China’s test of land-based missile defense system and the up-coming visit of the Dalai Lama, American officials were already expecting that the bilateral relationship was entering a turbulent stage. Things just got a whole lot bumpier.  And we still have Secretary Clinton’s "major address" on Internet freedom scheduled for January 21 to look forward to. [Update: Secretary Clinton has expressed the United States’ concern: " "We look to the Chinese government for an explanation. The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy."] Second, Google did an interesting thing in its announcement. It linked the cyber attacks and Chinese efforts to limit the freedom of the Internet. As Nart Villeneuve notes, the Great Firewall is built not just on filtering and blocking access, but also surveillance and attacks. It will be interesting if Secretary Clinton makes the same connection in her speech. [Update: Reuters is reporting that Google let the State Department know of its decision before the announcement was made.  Comments from State Department officials suggest that this has been under discussion for a while and that the speech is being/was crafted with Google in mind.]

China has tightened controls on the Internet again, preventing individuals from registering with the .cn domain and closing more than 700 file sharing websites. (laobaixing, literally the old hundred names, translates roughly to ordinary people). The official reason is to control pornography and limit piracy, though the New York Times quotes an article by a public security minister describing how anti-Chinese forces use the web to destabilize society. This has public backlash written all over it. The Great Firewall of China filters and censors a great deal of sensitive material, but the technologically savvy know how to get around it. Twitter, for example, is blocked in China, though Kai-Fu Lee, who left Google to start an innovation incubator, has over 740,000 followers on twitter. The vast majority of Chinese, however, are not using the Web to find political material, but to contact friends and share movies and music. Closing file-sharing sites is hitting these people where they live, driving home the reality of censorship, a reality that they could before happily avoid. The result will be that more people will discover more ways of getting around Chinese censors. This is what happened with Green Dam-Youth Escort, a filtering software the government insisted would have to be installed on all new computers, but then backed down in the face of resistance from ordinary users and companies.

Kidnappings and deaths among the corps of international journalists covering the Iraq war occur with grim regularity. Yet the conditions facing native Iraqi journalists—both those working for Iraqi media and as "stringers" for outside organizations—are even more harrowing.